Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector (ADC)

[astronobob]

These have been around for a couple/few years, I havent heard about till now ?

Anyone else have any insight and/or experience with them :question:

Sound very promising for high res planetary imaging in particular ..

http://skyinspector.co.uk/atm-dispersion-corrector--adc

[Shiraz]

Have used one for years Bob. They work as advertised, but the problem is that, if a planet is so low down that an ADC can help, it will also be so low down that the turbulence will generally give you crap results. An ADC can only help on those very rare excellent nights - and then it is really worthwhile if you take luminance images as well as RGB, or use an OSC.

[Nikolas]

Bintel sell the zwo versions for under 200,
Seen some results on their facebook and personal pages, So impressed I forked out for one which arrived the other day but thanks to Melbourne's fickle skies have not used it yet.

[alocky]

I've used one on my 25" while imaging with an as120 through lrgb filters. There's no doubt it improves the image, and if you're using fire capture for image acquisition there's some cool tools to help set it up.
I'm just waiting for a clear night with good seeing...
The Zwo one seems perfectly functional, and very cheap.
Cheers,
Andrew.

[janoskiss]

That's a very lengthy read I'm not up for, but I'm curious about the device. I can see how it could be useful for visual astronomy. But does it do anything for imaging that one cannot do in software?

[alocky]

If you have a look on the links on the Zwo site, you can skip through the text on how it works and how to adjust it, and there's a few pictures demonstrating the improvement in both osc and filtered mono imaging.
I definitely saw an improvement with both osc and mono video imaging.
Cheers
Andrew.

[astronobob]

Ray: I see, would be rather more useful for peeps further away from the equator where not as much altitude when planets at meridian - like yourself, Sth Aus, and same for Nthrn Hemi's , or if one cant afford time to stay up till midnight or bit beyond, which speaking of planets do around opposition !

Thats how I see it, the other Midnight Mars & Saturn were right in the zenith - this gadget would have need be set to cancel each other out as the zenith atmosphere hardly if any causes light deflection !

Mmm, not enough for this duck to worry about anyway, but sounds very useful for the conditions you touched on - planet low, atmosphere clear & steady, then bring all wavelengths together and capitalize
!!!

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Thanx Nik, great to know mate.
Weather, yup, already blaming that on Mothers day, Lol
Hope to see some your results down the track as your a fair way down Sth aswell :thumbsup:


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Cheers Andrew, some good positive feedback for the unwary :thumbsup:
Have you posted any previous planet images here with your setup and the adc, would be interesting to know so I can hunt them out for a squizz :D :thumbsup:

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Bit of reading there Steve huh, I was only able to get through it as it was quite interesting at the time and had my attention !
Re: Curious if useful for photog - as mentioned above, Id stab at it being quite useful in certain circumstances, eg, if one's location does Not allow for a high altitude pass of a planet when at/near the meridian, that said, there may be processing techniques out there to do correct images with these 'color focus' inconsistencies !

But I still hold firm that if ones raw base data is cleaner 'in all or any rgrds' when captured, then it will/should out perform any image with correction from processing - from a base point of photog application !!
On the other hand - can also take into account that some astro-imagers can actually do more improvement to their images via processing :thumbsup:
Bottom line is, depends on where ones strength is :thumbsup:

Rgrds ..

[janoskiss]

Bob, Thanks for the response to my question. I think you have the right idea: the better the data the better the end result, with or without clever processing.